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As parents, sometimes your kids ask you hard questions.
What do you say when you don’t have the answer?
Episode Transcript:
What to Say When You don’t know what to say.
This theme has come up in so many different forums, especially over the last few months as we’re living through this period of uncertainty and unpredictability. And there are so many times when we just don’t have the answer. And I’ve seen this come up a lot in parenting. Right? My child has questions about what’s going on in the world right now, or my child wants to know why they can’t see their friends, or my child wants to know what school is going to be like when we go back.
And we don’t know the answer.
And for a lot of us, we’ve been taught that you need to know. We’ve been taught to seek answers. It’s the overachiever’s dream to have all the answers.
And yet, we all when we’re honest, know that there are answers that we don’t have. And what I have learned is that being honest, and saying to your child, “you know, I don’t know”, is often the thing to say when you don’t know what to say.
Children know whether you’re lying or telling the truth. They instinctually know. And part of our job as parents is to help children decipher between who to trust and who not to trust. And so we want our children to trust us. And by trying to lie and/or bumble our way through a response, when we don’t really know is untruthful.
So when you don’t know what to say, saying “I don’t know” can often be an amazing starting point to help your child navigate a difficult conversation and to start coming up with their own thoughts about what’s going on, or just start exploring with their own feelings.
There is a quote from Brene Brown, where she says that vulnerability is something that we seek in others but hide for ourselves. Meaning we we want to be able to help people. We want people to be vulnerable with us. But, we are afraid to be vulnerable with others. And not knowing how to answer a question that you don’t know how to answer or not saying something when you don’t know what to say, that’s a period of feeling vulnerable.
So if you need permission to say, I don’t know, here’s your permission.
Be honest, be truthful. Tell your children that you don’t know. And that even though you don’t know, you still love them. You are still willing to talk about their feelings you are willing to share your own and help them learn that no matter what they can trust you to be honest and vulnerable. And that’s how together with your child, you can create more fluid and smooth communication and create more ease and joy together. More memories that are magical and wonderful and lasting – even if you didn’t know what to say when the conversation started.
Have a great day.
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About this “playcast”:
Life is messy. Kids are messy. Parenting is messy!
But, messy can be good.
To paraphrase Mrs. Frizzle, it means you’re taking chances, making mistakes, and learning.
Creative Spirit, Playful Discipline is a mini-podcast – a playcast! – for parents who want to embrace their uniqueness, shatter the “shoulds”, and find a rallying cry for their families so they can create fun, magically messy memories to last a lifetime.
